by Jim Rohn

An enterprising person is one who comes across a pile of scrap metal and sees the making of a wonderful sculpture. An enterprising person is one who drives through an old decrepit part of town and sees a new housing development. An enterprising person is one who sees opportunity in all areas of life.

To be enterprising is to keep your eyes open and your mind active. It’s to be skilled enough, confident enough, creative enough and disciplined enough to seize opportunities that present themselves… regardless of the economy.

A person with an enterprising attitude says, “Find out what you can before action is taken.” Do your homework. Do the research. Be prepared. Be resourceful. Do all you can in preparation of what’s to come.

Enterprising people always see the future in the present. Enterprising people always find a way to take advantage of a situation, not be burdened by it. And enterprising people aren’t lazy. They don’t wait for opportunities to come to them; they go after the opportunities. Enterprise means always finding a way to keep yourself actively working toward your ambition.

Enterprise is two things. The first is creativity. You need creativity to see what’s out there and to shape it to your advantage. You need creativity to look at the world a little differently. You need creativity to take a different approach, to be different.

What goes hand in hand with the creativity of enterprise is the second requirement: the courage to be creative. You need courage to see things differently, courage to go against the crowd, courage to take a different approach, courage to stand alone if you have to, courage to choose activity over inactivity.

And lastly, being enterprising doesn’t just relate to the ability to make money. Being enterprising also means feeling good enough about yourself, having enough self-worth to want to seek advantages and opportunities that will make a difference in your future. And by doing so, you will increase your confidence, your courage, your creativity and your self-worth—your enterprising nature.

There are 86,400 seconds in a day. Make every second count! Time waits for no one!!!

Imagine there is a bank that credits your account each morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day. And every evening it deletes whatever part of the balance you fail to use during that day. What would you do?

Draw out every cent.

Each one of us has such a bank. It’s called TIME. Every morning it credits you with 86,400 seconds. And every night it writes off as lost whatever you have failed to invest wisely. It carries no balance. It allows no overdraft. Each day it opens a new account for you. If you fail to use the day’s deposit, the loss is yours…

There is no going back. There is no drawing against the tomorrow. You must live in the present. On today’s deposit. Invest it in every opportunity. The clock is running. You’ve got to make the most of today.

Right Here. Right Now.

Yesterday is History, Tomorrow is a Mystery, Today is a Gift. THAT’S WHY IT’S CALLED THE PRESENT!

TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE!

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by Jim Rohn

Each of us has two distinct choices to make about what we will do with our lives. The first choice we can make is to be less than we have the capacity to be. To earn less. To have less. To read less and think less. To try less and discipline ourselves less. These are the choices that lead to an empty life. These are the choices that, once made, lead to a life of constant apprehension instead of a life of wondrous anticipation.

And the second choice? To do it all! To become all that we can possibly be. To read every book that we possibly can. To earn as much as we possibly can. To give and share as much as we possibly can. To strive and produce and accomplish as much as we possibly can. All of us have the choice.

To do or not to do. To be or not to be. To be all or to be less or to be nothing at all.

Like the tree, it would be a worthy challenge for us all to stretch upward and outward to the full measure of our capabilities. Why not do all that we can, every moment that we can, the best that we can, for as long as we can?

Our ultimate life objective should be to create as much as our talent and ability and desire will permit. To settle for doing less than we could do is to fail in this worthiest of undertakings.

Results are the best measurement of human progress. Not conversation. Not explanation. Not justification. Results! And if our results are less than our potential suggests that they should be, then we must strive to become more today than we were the day before. The greatest rewards are always reserved for those who bring great value to themselves and the world around them as a result of whom and what they have become.

Yes, I admit it, I’m a procrastinator! I mean just look at my last blog post before this one… it was from July 4th! (over 4 months ago!)

I’ve heard that the first step to recovery is to admit you have a problem. Well, I have a problem. For some reason, I procrastinate a lot. Don’t ask me why because I don’t know. I just do. So I am admitting it, right here to the world!

I currently work 12-14 hours a day and I have a family (amazing wife and 2 beautiful baby girls). I’m also trying to build my own business, so you can see how I might not have time to do everything on my “to-do list”. There is just not enough time in the day! Can you relate?

So, I am going to make a commitment starting today to become less of a procrastinator! And to get things started I found a great blog post I’m going to share with you below in case you too procrastinate sometimes.

Please leave a comment on this post if you ever procrastinate and/or can provide any tips for those of us that do. Thanks!!

How to Overcome Procrastination: 4 Classic and Essential Tips

(by Henrik Edberg – from positivityblog.com)

1. Break it down and just take the first step.

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

When you start to look too far into the future any task or project can seem close to impossible. And so you shut down because you become overwhelmed and start surfing the internet aimlessly instead. That is one of the reasons why it is good to plan for the future but then to shift your focus back to today and the present moment.

Then you just break down your project/task into smaller and practical steps and focus on taking the first step today. That is all you need to focus on, nothing else. By taking the first step you change your mental state from resistant to “hey, I’m doing this, cool”. You put yourself in state where you become more positive and open, a state where you may not be enthusiastic about taking the next step after this first one but you are at least accepting it. And so you can take the next step. And the next one after that.

The thing is, you can’t see the whole staircase anyway and it will shift and reveal itself along the way. That’s why the best of plans tend to fall apart at least a bit as you start to put it into action. You discover that your map of reality doesn’t look like reality.

2. Don’t blow a task out of proportion.

“If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.”
Olin Miller

”Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible.”
George Claude Lorimer

By over thinking and putting things off you may not only be trying to protect yourself from the pain that can come if you take action and have to do hard work or if you fail. You also make mountains out of molehills. The quotes above are so true it isn’t even funny. The more hours and days you put something off the worse it grows in your mind.

Because you are dwelling on it. And so it expands in your mind. And since you are putting it off you are probably thinking about it in a negative way. This makes a little thing a big Godzilla, a horrible beast that is threatening to ruin your life.

So plan a little and then take action.

Often you don’t even have to plan, you have been there before and you know what needs to be done. So stop thinking and just do it no matter how you feel and what you think. How you feel right now changes as quickly as the weather so it’s not the perfect guidance system or anything. And you don’t have to obey what it says (it’s not chains made of iron). You can just do what you know is right anyway.

3. Start with the hardest task of your day.

“Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.”
Dale Carnegie

Maybe you have an important call to make that you also fear might be uncomfortable. Maybe you know you have gotten behind on answering your emails and have big pile to dig into. Maybe you have the last five pages of your paper to finish.

Whatever it may be, get it out of your way the first thing you do.

If you start your day this way you will feel relieved. You feel relaxed and good about yourself. And the rest of the day – and your to-do list – tends to feel a lot lighter and easier to move through. It’s amazing what difference this one action makes.

4. Finish it.

“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task”
William James

“Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they started.”
David Allen

Not taking the first step to start accomplishing something can make you feel bad. But not finishing what you have started can also leave you in a sort of negative funk. You feel fatigued or stressed and sometimes you don’t even know why. It’s like someone zapped your inner power.

If that is the case, go over tasks and projects that you are currently involved in. Is there something there you know you want to finish but haven’t yet? Try to get that finished as soon as you can and you will start to feel a whole lot better.

Just be careful. Don’t think you have to finish everything you started. If a book sucks, read something else. Using this as an excuse to quit something that feels hard or unfamiliar is not a good idea. But there is no law that says that everything has to be completed.

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The first half of 2010 is in the books. This is the perfect time to do a success checkup!

If you’re not on course for reaching your 2010 goals, or you’ve lost momentum or you never even got started, you’ve got to check this out!

The Jim Rohn One-Year Success Plan is one of the most comprehensive success courses ever created. The 12-month program, developed by the late personal-achievement legend, will empower you to grow and continually transform yourself while focusing on a new pillar of success each month—and you can jump right in no matter what time of the year it is!

You’ll receive regular encouragement to stay on track, take positive action and move ahead with the motivation to achieve the life of your dreams!

Click here now to view a short video from SUCCESS magazine publisher Darren Hardy talking about why he strongly endorses The Jim Rohn One-Year Success Plan.

Experience the power of The Jim Rohn One-Year Success Plan!

I just started reading Darren Hardy’s new book, The Compound Effect, and absolutely love it!  This is such a simple book with just 6 chapters, but don’t let that fool you.  All I can say is if you are looking to have success in any area of your life, you have got to read this book.

This is what John C. Maxwell has to say about it… “The Compound Effect is a must-read book for success seekers. You want to know what it takes? You want to know what to do? It’s all in these pages. The Compound Effect is a clear and concise success operation manual!”

Here is the bottom line… (from Success.com)

The Compound Effect is the principle of reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices. What’s most interesting about this process to me is that, even though the results are massive, the steps, in the moment, don’t feel significant. Whether you’re using this strategy for improving your health, relationships, finances, or anything else for that matter, the changes are so subtle, they’re almost imperceptible. These small changes offer little or no immediate result, no big win, no obvious I-told-you-so payoff. So why bother?

Your only path to success is through a continuum of mundane, unsexy, unexciting, and sometimes difficult daily disciplines compounded over time. The results, the life and the lifestyle of your dreams can be yours when you put the Compound Effect to work for you. If you use the principles outlined in The Compound Effect, you will create your fairy tale ending!

Here is where you can buy the book and also get some awesome free resources… http://TheCompoundEffect.com

Email marketing can be profitable for any business, no matter what kind of product or service you are selling. It is significantly cheaper than other advertising methods and it helps build credibility with your subscribers. As a result, you can generate more sales and profits.

The foundation for successful email marketing is a targeted, responsive and permission-based email list. If you have a list of subscribers that trust you and consider you an expert, you’ve completed the first step and are on your way!

Below you will find 15 list-building ideas that will help you make the most of your email marketing efforts:

1. Provide useful, relevant and unique content. Your visitors will not give you their email addresses just because they can subscribe to your newsletter free of charge. You have to provide unique and valuable information that will be useful to your subscribers.
2. Add a subscription form to every page of your website. Make sure it stands out so it is easy to find. If appropriate, you can also include it in more than one place. For instance, your opt-in form might always appear in the top-left corner of your site, while you also include an opt-in at the bottom of some of your popular articles.
3. Make it easy for your reader to sign up. The more information you request, the fewer people will opt-in. In most cases, a name and an email address should suffice. If it’s not necessary, don’t include it here. (Note: If you don’t have a Privacy Policy, put the words “privacy policy generator” into a search engine and you should be able to find a suitable form for your readers to review.
4. Publish a Privacy Policy. Let your readers know that they can be confident you will not share their information with others. The easiest way to do this is to set up a Privacy Policy web page and provide the link to it below your opt-in form.
5. Show your first issue or other sample to your visitors. This lets potential subscribers review your newsletter before they sign up to determine if it is something they’d be interested in.
6. Archive past newsletter issues. A “library” of past newsletters is both appealing and useful to visitors and builds your credibility as an authority. In addition, if your articles are written with good SEO techniques in mind, they can send additional traffic to your web site through good search engine positioning.
7. Contact other newsletter publishers. Introduce yourself and explore ways you may be able to help each other. Perhaps you can introduce other publisher’s newsletters or print articles they have written to your list, with a link to sign up. When you contact them, be sure to tell them why you think THEIR readers would like what you have to offer and why YOUR readers would benefit from their newsletters. This is a win-win scenario; both of you will build your lists faster!
8. Give away bonuses subscribers can use. Create an opt-in bonus for joining your subscriber list. You can write an ebook or PDF report, or even hire a programmer to create downloadable or web-based software. But don’t limit yourself to only a gift for new opt-ins. Remind your readers that the next bonus is coming soon. People hate to miss out on things. If you systematically pass on “goodies” throughout the year, your subscribers are unlikely to leave.
9. Ask your subscribers to pass it on. Word of mouth is a powerful viral technique that works great with email marketing. If your subscribers find the content you share with them to be informative, they will pass your newsletter on to their friends. This can be a good source of new subscribers.
10. Let others reprint your newsletter as long as the content is not modified. Many webmasters and newsletter publishers are actively looking for high-quality content and, if they reprint your newsletter, you will get new subscribers, traffic and links pointing to your site.
11. Include a “Sign Up” button in the newsletter. If you are using plain text instead of HTML, provide a text link to your subscription page. You may feel that this is not required because the subscriber is already on your list, but remember that readers will forward your newsletters to others, or reprint it online. You want to make it easy for them to subscribe.
12. Add a squeeze page. A squeeze page has one goal − to get an opt-in and build your list. Think of it like a mini-sales letter for your subscription or opt-in bonus. It features a powerful headline and a couple of very important benefits that should make subscribers salivate to sign up to your list. Once created, use a service such as WordTracker to find hundreds of targeted keywords, and advertise there using pay-per-click advertising from Google, MSN and Yahoo.
13. Include testimonials on your squeeze page. This is crucial. Put 1 or 2 strong testimonials from satisfied subscribers on your squeeze page. This can be in any format, but you may find that multimedia (audio or video social proof) is more “believable”. To increase that believability, include full names, locations and/or urls; don’t use “Bob K, FL” as a testimonial name.
14. Blog religiously. Blogging is a great way to communicate with your potential customers, and it creates a nice synergy with your email marketing. Be sure to include your newsletter sign-up form on each page of your blog. You can start a free blog at Blogger or WordPress.
15. Post on other blogs. Post great comments and information on similar blogs with a link to your squeeze or opt-in page. Also comment on others’ blogs through trackbacks. In most cases, your comments will be posted on their blogs with a link back to your site. This is an easy way to generate new traffic and subscribers.

Need Email Marketing to grow your business?

I use and recommend both Aweber AND GetResponse!

This is actually one of the few things I still remember from high school… “Carpe Diem”, meaning Seize The Day. We were reading a book in English class when someone said “Carpe Diem” and explained what it meant. For some reason it really stuck with me over the years. I have remembered this saying and what it means my whole life.

This is a great quote that I feel sums it up…

“Learn from the past, set vivid, detailed goals for the future, and live in the only moment of time over which you have any control: NOW.” – Denis Waitley

Here is what Denis Waitley has to say about it…

What each of us is doing this minute is the most important event in history for us. We have decided to invest our resources in this opportunity rather than in any other. It is helpful to remember this when we consider the passage of time.

As the years pass, I am acutely aware that the bird of time is on the wing. At my fiftieth high school reunion, I saw old people who claimed to be my former classmates. We all had big name tags printed in capital letters so we wouldn’t have to squint with our reading glasses on trying to associate the name with each well-traveled face. It was only yesterday that I was really enjoying high school. What had happened to the five decades in between? Where had they flown?

To the side of the bandstand, where the big-band sound of the late 1940s and 50s blared our favorite top-ten hits, there was a poster with a printed verse for all of us to see. I read the words out loud:

“There are two days in every week about which we should not worry, two days which should be kept free from fear and apprehension.

“One of these days is Yesterday, with its mistakes and cares, its faults and blunders, its aches and pains. Yesterday has passed forever beyond our control. All the money in the world cannot bring back Yesterday. We cannot undo a single act we performed; we cannot erase a single word we said. Yesterday is gone.

“The other day we should not worry about is Tomorrow, with its possible adversities, its burdens, its large promise, and poor performance. Tomorrow is also beyond our immediate control. Tomorrow’s sun will rise, either in splendor or behind a mask of clouds; but it will rise. Until it does, we have no stake in tomorrow, for it is as yet unborn. This leaves only one day: Today.

“Anyone can fight the battles of just one day. It is only when you and I add the burdens of those two awful eternities – Yesterday and Tomorrow – that we break down. It is not the experience of Today that drives us mad, it is remorse and bitterness for something which happened Yesterday and the dread of what Tomorrow may bring. Let us, therefore, live this one full Today.”

Malcolm Forbes believed the important thing is never to say die until you’re dead, and he lived that example to the hilt. It is, as we realize when we suddenly attend our fiftieth high school reunion, a short journey. But it also is difficult to be depressed and active at the same time. So get active! And make today your best day ever!

-Dr. Denis Waitley

Watch this video here: http://tonyrobbinstraining.com

This is an amazing video with Tony Robbins and two Internet Marketing Millionaires!

If you want to break through to the next level of success, you really need to watch this video. Tony Robbins interviews two well known Internet marketing multi-millionaires, Frank Kern and John Reese.

They go to Tony with the problem of why many Internet marketers don’t follow through on what they learn and become successful. This leads to all kinds of lessons about human behavior, changing your state and conditioning yourself for success.

I guarantee that no matter who you are and what level you are at, you will get at least a couple gems and a lot of motivation out of watching this thought-provoking video.

From Tony…

In this interview I meet with two very successful students, Frank Kern and John Reese. Both of them are self-made multi millionaires who made their fortunes by selling products on the Internet. What’s particularly interesting about both of them is that neither had any “real” education. Neither one finished college and they both went from being broke to becoming wealthy.

And they still continue to thrive in today’s economy. So the purpose of this interview is to uncover the traits that successful people have in common. Specifically, the traits that cause them to take massive action and follow through. As you’ll see, the solution is really quite simple and available to us all.

In this video, you’ll discover:

• The “4-Square” System For Creating Massive Action TODAY.
• The number one thing that’s holding you back…and how you can banish it from your life forever.
• The subtle mental shift that millionaires use to get a financial jumpstart.
• A short exercise that destroys your nagging skepticism and builds your momentum to succeed.

Watch this video here: http://tonyrobbinstraining.com/

Knowledge fueled by emotion equals action. And action is the ingredient that ensures results. Only action can cause a reaction; to take it one step further, only positive action can cause a positive reaction.

Action… The whole world loves to watch those who make things happen, and it rewards them for causing waves of productive enterprise.

I stress this because today I see many people who are really sold on affirmations. And yet there is a famous saying, “Faith without action serves no useful purpose.” How true!

Now I have nothing against good affirmations when used as a tool to create action. And it’s also true that when repeated, to reinforce a disciplined plan, affirmations can help create wonderful results.

But there is also a very thin line between faith and folly. You see affirmations without action can be the beginning of self-delusion. And for your well-being there is little worse than self-delusion…

The man dreams of wealth and yet walks daily toward certain financial disaster, or the woman who wishes for happiness and yet thinks thoughts and commits acts that lead her toward certain despair, are both victims of the false hope which affirmations without action can manufacture. Why? Because words soothe and, like a narcotic, they can lull us into a state of complacency. Always remember: To make progress you must first get started!

Now the key is to get started today… Whatever the project, start today! Start setting your first goal…today. Start listening to educational CDs…today. Start contacting two prospects a day…today. Start following-up with your prospects…today. Start putting a portion of your bonus check into your new “investment for my fortune” account…today.

Get some momentum going on your new commitment for the good life. See how many activities you can pile on your new commitment to build your better life. Go all out! Break away from the downward pull of gravity. Start your thrusters going. Prove to yourself that the waiting is over and the hoping is past; that faith, and knowledge, and action have now taken charge.

Today is your new day, and it can be the beginning of your new life! With discipline you will be amazed at how much progress you’ll be able to make. Besides what have you got to lose, except the guilt and fear of the past?

Now if you’re really ready to build a better life, here’s my personal challenge to you: See how many things you can start, and continue, today…the first day of your new beginning. Because to make progress you must first get started!

To Your Success,

Jim Rohn – “America’s Foremost Business Philosopher”